Saturday, August 3, 2013

called to create

Ten years ago this Summer I was expecting my first child and we were moving into our first home. Something began to happen inside of me. At the time I would not have been able to describe that "something" clearly. Today, though, that "something" can easily be summed up in the phrase called to create. Why, yes, God was creating a child in my womb, and along with that creation came this overwhelming need to create a nurturing environment in which this new soul could explore, thrive, create, as well as a place for my husband and I to grow as parents and people. It's very difficult for me to describe myself as an artist, but I'm stemming off of the fact that I am a creation of the Creator, have been involved in the creation of two human beings and each day create in my home and life. It seems as if our lives are my palette, and I get to organize, schedule, plan, garden, school, bake, prepare, clean, adventure, engage in the most meaningful and creative of ways, if only I will. The art isn't something I can display in a museum because it is our living that is the art, what is created.

I recently began reading Walking on Waterby Madeleine L'Engle. I am not finished, yet, but so far the book is quite dogeared and marked. L'Engle is in the category of people I haven't known personally (of course), but with whom I feel a kinship (isn't it odd how you can feel that way about an author?). This excerpt is L'Engle's way of saying what I mean.

What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint or clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts or having some kind of important career. Several women have written to me to complain about A Swiftly Tilting Planet. They feel that I should not have allowed Meg Murry to give up a career by marrying Calvin, having children, and quietly helping her husband with his work behind the scenes. But if women are to be free to choose to pursue a career as well as marriage, they must also be free to choose the making of a home and the nurture of a family as their vocation; that was Meg's choice, and a free one, and it was as creative a choice as if she had gone on to get a Ph.D. in quantum mechanics.